The scandal-hit Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust has paid out more than £1.1
million in compensation for “gross and degrading” treatment that caused or
hastened patients’ deaths, according to lawyers.

Leigh Day, the leading solicitors, said 120 of their clients had successfully brought claims over abuses of their loved ones’ human rights while they were at Stafford Hospital.

The London law firm argued that the trust had breached three sections of the Human Rights Act, including Article 3, which bans torture or inhuman or degrading treatment.

Seven out of ten of their clients were reported to have been left to sit in faeces or urine for up to five hours.

Food and drink was left out of reach of patients, who were forced to drink water out of flower vases, and people in agony were forced to wait up to 15 hours on occasion before being given painkillers, the law firm said.

In the past year Leigh Day has received eight new inquiries relating to treatment of patients at the hospital.

Up to 1,200 patients died between 2005 and 2009 due to substandard care at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust.

Robert Francis QC, who chaired the £13 million Mid Staffs public inquiry, will tomorrow publish his report, which is expected to give a damning critique of the institutional failings throughout the NHS that enabled the tragedy to take place.

In 2009 a highly-critical report by the Healthcare Commission revealed a catalogue of failings at the trust and said "appalling standards" put patients at risk.

A year later an independent inquiry into events at the trust found it had "routinely neglected" patients.